


What Happens In Venice...

by Zaffie



Series: Most Of This Series Does Not Actually Take Place In Venice [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: And Now Things Are Awkward, Because Skye And Ward Totally Had Sex, Damn It Guys Pretend To Be Normal, Drunkenness, F/M, Like Super Weird, Many Regrets Happen, Memory Loss, Oops, Skye Will Never Be Drinking Again, They're Being Weird About It, one-night stand
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-28
Updated: 2014-03-19
Packaged: 2018-01-14 02:03:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1248580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zaffie/pseuds/Zaffie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the team has a break in one of the most romantic cities in the world, some of them take the chance to drink. A lot. Too much, in fact. Not being able to remember who you just had sex with is never a good sign.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Una Notte Di Passione

Some obnoxious gnome with a jackhammer is drilling away merrily inside Skye’s head and she’s just – _god_ , she can’t remember when she was last this hungover. What the hell happened last night?

     Moving stiffly, she turns on her side and tries to open her eyes. They feel glued shut, and when one finally slits open, a flood of light assails her senses. Skye feels ridiculously nauseous. She wonders if she should stagger her way into the ensuite bathroom – and then she opens both eyes and remembers that her bunk doesn’t have a personal bathroom attached. Whose bed is she lying in?

     Carefully, Skye props herself up on one elbow. She uses her hand to push her hair up off her face; it’s messy hair, sex hair. There’s a man lying beneath the covers of the bed and all she can see of him is some really attractive sculpted back muscles. He’s face down in a pillow. Skye grimaces, and lifts the covers to check how many clothes she’s wearing. The answer is zero – and her muscular bed companion doesn’t have any on either. She takes a moment to look at him properly, because really, she can’t remember last night at all and she feels like she should get _something_ out of this, and then she swings her legs out of bed and starts searching for her clothes.

     Her underwear are hanging from the lamp, which seems like a logical place for them to be. Skye has to venture into the bathroom to find her jeans, and that’s when she sees the perfectly folded white towels and little cakes of wrapped soap and realises that she’s in a hotel room. Even though her head is spinning, she picks up the soap and struggles to read the name of the hotel. _Luna Hotel Baglioni_. Italy, Skye remembers suddenly. The team is in Italy; Venice, to be precise, and this is her hotel.

     Okay, so… what? She got drunk last night, obviously, found a man and took him back to her hotel room? But this isn’t her room. There’s a backpack in the corner that isn’t hers and her laptop is nowhere to be seen. She never goes anywhere without her laptop.

     Skye pulls on her jeans and starts searching for her bra. Really, she’s making a huge mess of this whole ‘quick getaway’ thing. It’s been way too long since she had a one-night stand. She’s out of practice.

     Her bra is under the guy’s pillow. Her luck this morning is unbelievable, and she’s pretty sure that she’s going to throw up. Skye covers her breasts with one arm and tiptoes closer, stretching out the other…

     Grant Ward wakes up with a snort, rolls off his pillow and stares up at her.

     In this moment of crisis, Skye absolutely loses her cool and squawks, “What the damn hell?” in a voice way too high-pitched and grating for her hungover ears. 

 

It takes Ward a little while to pull himself together enough to speak. Skye hovers in the corner of the bedroom, with her arms crossed tightly over her chest, and waits.

     “Skye,” he says eventually, and then he winces. “What happened?”

     “I had waaaay too much to drink,” she volunteers. “I guess you did too.”

     “What am I doing in your room?”

     “This is your room,” Skye says, and then she pauses. “Oh, crap, I’m gonna puke. Hold that thought.” She dashes for the bathroom.

     Ward blunders after her in some kind of autopilot daze. He kneels down by the toilet and holds her hair back and Skye feels too sick to care about how she’s half-naked and he’s completely naked and she probably looks the most unattractive she has ever looked. Ever.

     “What did we do last night?” Ward asks when she’s finished. He reaches up and flushes the toilet. Skye claws her way over to the sink and washes her mouth out. She’ll probably be okay now, if this follows the pattern of previous hangovers.

     “I have no idea,” she admits when her throat feels clean again. “But, um, there was much nakedness. I’m sorry, Ward.”

     “It’s not your fault,” he sighs, and then he wanders back into the bedroom and falls into the bed. “Don’t tell Coulson.”

     “Yeah, okay,” Skye agrees. “Good thinking.” She yanks her bra out from under his pillow and puts it on. Her shirt is on the doorhandle, so she grabs that too. “I’m just gonna… go. See you later.” In great haste, Skye backs up and bangs into the door. The noise and the impact jar her head even more and she cringes from the pain, and then she trips over her boots and has to bend to fish them up.

     By the time she finally makes it out of the door, she feels like crying. Ward was passed out on the bed again, and he’d barely said anything to her. Does this mean he hates her now? Is she supposed to hate him? How the hell are they meant to work together? He said not to tell Coulson, and Skye thinks maybe that makes this illegal fraternisation, or something. She wants to tell Simmons, but if what they’ve done is really so wrong, then it’s a bad idea. A very bad idea. Also, she can’t remember whether there were condoms involved or not, but she hasn’t been on birth control since she left Miles and moved to L.A.

   Oh god, they’re totally screwed.


	2. La Mattina Molto Scomodo

It takes Ward a little while to pull himself together, if he’s honest. His usual response to trouble is to run away from it with his eyes closed, so when he flops back onto the bed and hears Skye leave the room he does his best to turn his mind onto other things.

     It’s not working. He can’t think about anything else, probably because of the headache pounding its way through his temples. Ward presses a hand to his eyes and groans, which doesn’t help his headache much. Then he swings his legs out of bed and sets about the arduous task of finding enough clothes to look presentable.

     Skye’s door swings open almost immediately when he knocks on it. She’s obviously had time to get dressed, because she’s wearing one of those half-denim half-cotton hooded jumpers that she likes so much and a pair of jeans. Her hair is wet and dripping down her back from a recent shower.

     “Back for more?” she asks Ward.

     He steps inside quickly and closes the door behind him. “Listen, Skye-”

     “Brush your hair,” she interrupts.

     “What?”

     “Brush your hair. You’ve got sex hair.” She steps closer and smooths her fingers through his hair and for a second Ward thinks he remembers a flash of last night, _her hands clutching at his hair and tugging as he hoists her up and presses her back against a wall_ but then it’s gone.

     “Right,” he says awkwardly. “Thanks. Anyway, I don’t want us to be uncomfortable about this, okay? We’re both mature adults,” actually he’s not sure if the word _mature_ can really be applied to Skye, “and this doesn’t need to change anything between us.”

     “Well it’s gonna change _something_ when I end up giving birth to freaking Agent Baby Ward! Specifically, it’s gonna change _my vagina_.”

     “What?” Ward yelps. “You’re pregnant?!”

     “I don’t know, bozo,” Skye shrugs. “You tell me. Did we use a condom?”

     “I, uh,” Ward tries. He can hear the pained note in his own voice as he admits, “I can’t remember.”

     “Well then I guess we wait a couple of weeks and find out,” Skye sighs. “Don’t worry, this isn’t my first rodeo.”

     “Then maybe you should start carrying condoms,” Ward snarks, and it was a cheap shot but it made him feel better.

     Skye ignores him. “Is there some protocol rule about this? Is that why you don’t want the rest of the team to know?”

     No, Ward thinks, it’s because I’m sleeping with May and I’m pretty sure everyone else on the team would kill me for toying with your feelings. “Yeah, sort of,” he tells Skye.

     “Crap,” she moans, and she sinks down onto the bed and buries her face in her hands. “Okay, well, this isn’t so bad, is it? I’m probably not pregnant and we can just… forget all about this. I mean the morning part. I already forgot last night.” She peeks up at him through her fingers, a cheeky smile spreading across her face. “It must have been a less-than-stellar performance, Agent Ward. How disappointing.”

     “Well it obviously wasn’t that great for me either,” he snaps, and then he glares at her. “Just don’t tell anyone, okay?”

     “Yeah, yeah, I know,” she mutters. “I won’t tell anyone.”

     “Are you sure?”

     “Oh, my god, Ward, do you want to pinkie promise?”

     He shakes his head. “No need for that.”

     “Now get the hell out of my hotel room before someone wonders why you were in here all morning,” Skye insists.

     Ward leaves.

 

Unfortunately, it seems to be easier said than done to forget everything that happened. He doesn’t see Skye again until that afternoon, when the whole team congregates back on the bus, and when he does, a shock travels down his spine as the memory of what they did floods back.

     For some reason, when he sees her standing there, hair blowing around her face, eyes fixed on a spot in the clouds, he is desperate to remember. What did her skin feel like, when he touched it? Was it as soft as he imagines it to be? Did she take her own shirt off, or did he do it for her? Maybe he did it, unwrapping her carefully, gently, _lovingly_.

     Ward jerks his head violently, as if the physical gesture will literally shake his thoughts loose. He reminds himself that they were drunk, that none of it was careful or gentle. He reminds himself that he doesn’t have any feelings towards Skye, that the only reason he had sex with her last night was because he was drunk and she was there.

     When he thinks he’s ready, he walks up into the bus, passing Skye on the way. “Hey,” he says to her. She looks over and gives him a small smile. There’s no kind of a smirk, nothing knowing in her gaze. Ward wonders if maybe she’s forgotten for real.

     Fitz comes up behind him and claps him on the shoulder as he gets near the lab. “That was some night, eh?” he says jovially.

     “Um, yeah,” Ward replies carefully. He starts panicking internally. “I don’t really… remember much.”

     “Oh, I’m not surprised,” Fitz chuckles. “You were absolutely hammered.”

     “What, exactly…?”

     “You remember coming to the bar with Simmons and Skye and I,” Fitz encourages, and yeah, Ward does remember that. He also has a hazy memory of a pool game which he thinks Simmons won, and they were all doing shots, and he was running his tongue up the flat muscle of Skye’s stomach… oh. That probably came later. He thinks that came later. He hopes it came later.

     “I don’t remember much after the pool game?” Ward ventures.

     “Yeah, you nearly passed out on the table,” Fitz laughs. “Simmons was getting too competitive – you know how she is when she’s been drinking – so I took her home after she thrashed you at pool. Skye stayed, though. You can ask her if you need to know what you did.” Fitz leans in close and whispers, “I bet it was something horrifically embarrassing. I hope Skye got video.”

     Ward rolls his eyes, but he tells Fitz, “Thanks,” as he angles away from the lab and starts climbing the stairs. He’s having a massive craving for a cup of coffee right about now, and he’s got an awful feeling that when the plane finally begins to move, it’s going to make his hangover much worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The plot thickens! For some reason I love the idea of tracing back Skye and Ward's night, so expect more of that piecing together over the next few chapters. :) Don't forget to comment and tell me what you think! I love comments. I am a comment demon. For reals.


	3. Non Sono Biscotti Nella Cucina

Skye brushes past Jemma in the kitchen and leans in to mutter, “We’ve got a Code Purple.” She saunters away before Jemma can try to make casual conversation with her, because that never goes well.

     The scientist seeks her out later, as her training with Ward finishes. She scoots around the taller agent and asks, “What’s a Code Purple?”

     Ward looks over at them curiously, so Skye grabs Jemma’s elbow and steers her through the lab, ignoring Fitz, and into the corridors at the back. “I made it up.”

     “Why did you make up a new code? I thought we’d covered everything. Code Red is cramps, and Code Blue is movie time, and Code Green is general gossip, and Code Brown is when May and Ward are being mean to you, and Code Yellow is when I need to rant about science stuff and-”

     “Right, but I forgot to add Code Purple, which is code for ‘help me oh god help me I just slept with my supervising officer’.”

     Jemma’s mouth falls open with a snap. “Skye!” she exclaims.

     Skye grimaces. “I know.”

     “ _Skye!_ ” Jemma yelps. “You had sex with Agent Ward?!”

     “Don’t broadcast it!” Skye hisses, clapping her hand over her friend’s mouth. She looks at Jemma’s eyes until she thinks the other woman is ready. “Are you calm now?”

     Jemma nods slowly, so Skye removes her hand. “What happened?” the scientist demands immediately.

     “I don’t really remember,” Skye confesses. “But I blame you entirely. Why the hell would you leave me and Ward together when we were both drunk?”

     “I shouldn’t have left you?”

     “No, you… what’s a British insult?”

     “Berk,” Jemma provides helpfully.

     “Right. No, you berk! It’s obvious that Ward and I have UST-”

     “What’s UST?”

     “Jem, we’ve been through this,” Skye sighs. “Unresolved sexual tension. Remember?”

     “I didn’t know that was obvious,” Jemma protests.

   “Well it is obvious! You…”

     “Git.”

     “You git.”

     “So?” Jemma asks. “What happened? Did you resolve your sexual tension?”

     “Well yeah,” Skye says, “I woke up naked in his hotel room. But neither of us really remember anything and so we’re both kind of freaking out – I think I might be freaking out more than Ward though – and also I might be pregnant.”

     “Aren’t you on birth control? I thought it was mandatory for SHIELD agents.”

     “I’m not an agent,” Skye reminds her, “and I have really bad reactions to the pill, ok? It sucked.”

     Jemma glances around furtively, which makes her look incredibly suspicious, and then she leans in close and whispers, “I could give you a blood test, if you want.”

     A smile spreads across Skye’s face. “You’d do that for me? Aw, Jem!” She wraps her arms around the shorter girl’s waist and rests her head on her shoulder.

     Jemma looks quite pleased with herself.

 

The first step is to get Fitz out of the lab, which proves to be a challenge in and of itself. He’s immovable.

     “Like a rock,” Skye mutters.

     Eventually, they lure him out with the promise that there are cookies in the kitchen (there aren’t) and then Jemma grabs a needle and approaches Skye’s arm.

     “Hold still,” she murmurs, her concentration intense, and then May strides in. The younger women instantly jump away from each other. Jemma hides the needle behind her back. “Hi, Agent May!” she says in a falsely bright voice.

     Skye elbows her. “Shut up,” she warns.

     Jemma wrinkles her nose, but concedes her bad improvisational skills and lapses into silence.

     “Should I know what’s going on in here?” May asks, and in that second, Skye remembers why Ward told her not to tell anyone else on the team.

     “Holy-” she begins, and then interrupts herself to say, “Code Purple!” and drag Jemma out of the lab.

     “What’s going on?” the scientist asks as they move. “I thought we already had the Code Purple!”

     “No, listen,” Skye babbles, “I just remembered that Ward said I mustn’t tell anyone on the bus, because it’s fraternisation and it’s illegal and they could chop off his penis… ok I made that part up. But you can’t tell anyone! You have to swear!”

     “I swear,” Jemma says earnestly, “but I don’t think it’s fraternisation.”

     “It _is_ ,” Skye insists.

     “In that case, I can’t take your blood. SHIELD will keep a record of the tests.”

     “Crap.” Skye takes a deep breath and holds it for a few seconds, calming herself. “I guess I’ll just have to find out the old-fashioned way, then.”

 

Ward comes to talk to her after dinner, when she’s washing up.

     “Hey,” he says.

     Skye glances up and him and tries to be cool. “Hey.”

     He leans over her and his breath tickles the back of her neck. Without meaning to, Skye thinks back to last night, and she thinks she remembers his hands clutching at her waist, her thighs, his lips in her hair. She swallows, hard.

     “Are you doing okay with all of this?” he asks. His gesture encompasses the two of them and also the packed sink, but somehow Skye doesn’t think he’s talking about the dishes.

     “I’m fine, Ward,” she tells him, and is pleased when her voice stays firm. “You don’t need to be hovering over me, okay? Like I said, give me a couple of weeks and I’ll tell you whether I’m pregnant or not.”

     “That wasn’t… I’m not… Skye.”

     “That’s my name, robot boy. Don’t wear it out.” She stares resolutely at the sink and ignores Ward’s warm body right behind her. After a while, she feels him move away, and lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. Internally, she is freaking out and her nerves feel stretched to breaking point. She refuses to let Ward see any of that, though. He can’t know how scared she is, not when he’s so calm about all of this. Skye doesn’t know what he’d think of her.


	4. Non Lasciate Skye Dare Al Bambino Un Nome

Ward is freaking out.

     It’s getting to the point where he’s actually worried about himself, because he _never_ feels this nervous. Never.

     Skye, on the other hand, is cool, calm and collected. Every time Ward looks at her, he gets flashes of memory in his head – a sight, a sound, a smell – and she’s just carrying on with life as though nothing ever happened.

     He feels like he has to talk to someone about it. He nearly spills the beans to May, when he catches her in a quiet moment in the hallways. He says, “Hey,” and thinks instantly about Skye and betrayal and the ramifications of having any kind of sexual relationship with two girls at once. He walks away before May has a chance to say anything back.

 

Obviously, the best way to deal with these feelings is for him to carry on as normal, the way Skye seems to be able to do. The problem is, he can’t seem to remember what normal means anymore.

     He tries to read, but his mind is full of other things. Stupid things. For some reason he keeps remembering some breathy, staccato little noise that Skye made last night and now he’s wondering if he could make her do it again. If he kissed her, would she stutter-gasp against his skin like that?

     Ward isn’t confident enough in himself to do physical training with Skye today, especially not since they’ve been working on pins and chokeholds. He doesn’t want to have her body pressed up against his, not today. Not when he’s trying to forget. Instead, he suggests a board game and she nags at him until he agrees to make it _Monopoly_. She always wins by obnoxiously buying the most expensive spots on the board – and, sure enough, today she pulls in Mayfair and Park Lane within the first ten minutes and cackles at Ward gleefully as he prepares to lose.

   It all feels so normal, and comfortable, and Ward thinks, _this_ is how it’s supposed to be. He likes it this way. Maybe it won’t be so hard to forget about this after all.

 

That night, he dreams about Skye, in a way which is _completely_ inappropriate for an SO. He wakes up and feels dirty and uncomfortable inside his skin. It takes a long, cold shower to drive the thoughts out of his head, and then he has to train Skye.

     “Why did you shower _before_ you got all sweaty?” she asks him, wrinkling her nose.

     “I was tired,” he tells her. “It woke me up.”

     “Oh, I know,” she yawns. “Tell me about it. I’m exhausted lately.”

     Ward gives her a sharp, searching look and she catches it and rolls her eyes at him. “What?” he tries to protest. “I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

     Skye glances around and lowers her voice before she says, “If I’m pregnant, I don’t think we’ll be seeing any symptoms yet. Okay? So stop walking on eggshells around me, Ward.”

   Ward grimaces, guilty because that’s exactly what he was doing, and she’s taking this so much better than he is. He feels like he should make a joke, to prove that he’s not fazed by the idea of her pregnancy. “If you’re pregnant,” he begins, “I want to call the baby Sparta.”

     “Why?”

     “So I can introduce him to people and say,” Ward draws a deep breath and roars, “this – is – Sparta!”

     Skye just stares at him for a second, and then cracks up and doubles over, clutching her stomach and laughing breathlessly. Ward swallows hard at the sound of her hitching breaths and refuses to dwell on them. Instead, he pulls Skye up and smiles at her and makes her walk through the drill again.

 

They pass each other on the way to dinner and Skye leans in and whispers, “I want to call the baby Yoda.”

     “If we’re going with Star Wars names, call it Han Solo,” Ward returns easily.

 

Over dinner, Skye suddenly hurls, “Katniss,” at him.

     “Not from young adult fiction,” Ward groans. “Otherwise you might as well call it Edward Cullen.”

     Skye pretends to retch. The rest of the table stares at them in absolute bemusement.

 

At some point, their fictional baby names transition to ones which are a play on Ward’s surname.

     Ward kind of likes the idea of sharing his name with his baby. He tries not to think about it too hard.

     “Ree,” he suggests. “Ree Ward.”

     “Back,” Skye counters. “Back Ward.”

     “Cow. Cow Ward.”

   “That’s just mean,” she laughs. She pauses, thinking, and then her face lights up. “Oh, my god, I think I’ve got it! Awk.”

     “Awk Ward,” he tries, and then he grins. “Did we just name our baby?”

     “I think we did,” Skye teases. “Congratulations, Mr Ward, you’re a proud father to baby Awk.”

     “What a good mother you are, Skye.”

     “Awk is gonna hate us.”

     He smirks. “Awk is going to hate _you_ ,” he corrects. “Rest assured that I will be telling our son exactly who named him.”

     “Or daughter.”

     “Or daughter,” Ward agrees, and suddenly it becomes all too real to him. “I, uh, I have to go. Sleep. Goodnight.” He hastens away and feels like a loser. There’s no denying how hard his heart is thumping in his chest right now. He imagines what Skye would look like holding a baby. How he would feel, with his child cradled in his arms. God, he’d love that thing _so much_.

     He’s terrified. He doesn’t know what scares him more – the idea that he might be a father, or the idea that he might _not_.


	5. Lui Prende I Miei Pantaloni

Skye doesn’t realise that she’s stolen the boxers until Ward steals them back.

     She bumps into him coming out of her bunk and he has the boxers that she’s been sleeping in for the past week or so (the silky blue ones, with the peacock feathers) clutched in his hands.

     “Hey!” she exclaims. “Those are mine!”

     “They were mine first,” he says seriously, even as Skye tries to snatch them from him.

     She pauses. “They were?”

     “I’m pretty sure I was wearing them when we – you know. In Venice. You must have grabbed them with your stuff.”

     “I did?” she asks, and then shakes her head. “Whoa, whoa, hang on. You wear boxers?”

     Ward’s ears go bright red. It makes him look very vulnerable as he says, “I don’t think it matters.”

     “Of course it does, Ward, it’s like _the_ question.”

     “What question?”

     “Boxers or briefs!”

     “Look, sometimes I just feel like wearing boxers,” he says defensively. “Please give them back.”

     Skye releases her grip and lets him take her pants away. She’s kind of annoyed that now she has to find something new to sleep in.

    

In the dark, it’s hard for her not to think about things. She’s usually good at keeping everything out of her mind, filling it with useless nonsense instead. For some reason, that trick only works in the daylight.

     Ward is really attractive. Like really, super attractive. Unnaturally so. Skye can’t really believe that she managed to land a guy like that, even if he has the emotional maturity of a five-year-old and it only lasted one night. In her past, the only guys she’s managed to get the attention of have either been mid-forties or really douchey men with stupid scruffy beards. A lot of them seemed to try and pick her up on public transport, too, now that she thinks about it. She’s been hit on while riding buses, trams and once a taxi. Does this count as a plane pick-up?

     Skye starts when she feels where her hands are. While she’s been thinking they’ve slid down to cover her stomach, enfolding it protectively. For a second, Skye thinks she feels a curve under her fingers and she allows herself to imagine… and then she yanks her hands away and turns onto her side and closes her eyes.

     Her new pyjama pants are itchy. She shucks them off beneath the covers and tosses them into a corner of the room, leaving her in just her cotton underwear, because she’s not cool enough to buy anything lacy or frilly.

 

She wakes up with a jump and still feels like Ward’s hands are on her chest. Her skin crawls. Skye hurls the covers back and leaps out of bed, still half-asleep.

     The light is on in Ward’s bunk, although it’s dimmed. When she knocks on the door he says, “Come in,” quietly.

     She slips inside. “Were you waiting for someone?”

     “No. Is something wrong?”

     “No.” With both pressing questions asked and answered, Skye feels free to sit on the edge of the bed. She doesn’t realise until she feels the covers against her bare legs that she’s not wearing any pants, and then she cringes a little bit and glances up at Ward to see if he’s disapproving. He _is_ staring at her legs, but she wouldn’t say he looked unhappy. More… lost in thought. “Ward?”

     “Uh huh?”

     “What are we going to do with a baby?”

     He eyes her seriously. “Skye, we don’t even know if there’s going to be a baby yet.”

     It’s funny, she thinks. It used to be her reminding him of that. “I know, but… we can’t stay on the plane with a baby, can we?”

     “Maybe we can.”

     “We’d have to leave SHIELD. I’d have to leave SHIELD, at least,” she says, and it surprises her to realise just how miserable she sounds about it. She’s become so attached to everything they do in this stupid team.

     “We might not have to,” Ward tells her. “There are… other options.”

     She twigs to his meaning instantly and feels fury rise up within her. “You mean giving it away? Oh, my god, Ward, you _know_ how I feel about that! You know what happened to me!”

     He shrugs, but his dark eyes are fathomless and unreadable. Skye wishes, not for the first time, that he had a more open face.

     “I don’t know, Skye,” he says at last. “I’ve never been in a situation like this before.”

     She presses the heels of her hands into her eyes. “I can’t do this, Ward,” she says eventually. “It’s driving me insane. I’m so _fucking_ terrified.”

     “Me too,” he says fervently.

     Skye peeks over at him. “But you seem so… I don’t know, so calm.”

     “So do you,” he explains.

     “I’m not calm, I’m having a quiet meltdown.”

     “Well I’m having an internal panic attack.”

     Skye groans, and flops backwards on the bed. “Ward, why don’t we just try and be honest with each other?”

     He hesitates, and then he says, “All right,” but he doesn’t sound very convincing. Skye puts an arm over her face.

     “You don’t have to tell me what you’re thinking if you don’t want to.”

     “No – no, I do want to.”

     “Go on, then.”

     Ward takes a deep breath – probably steeling his nerves. “I keep thinking I’m remembering things,” he says at last. “Things about that night.”

     “Good things?” Skye asks, unable to understand why he seems so upset about it.

   He nods, rapidly, and then says, “But that’s the problem. I don’t – I can’t be around you, Skye.” She gasps sharply, feeling it like a physical pain. He hates her? “No,” Ward says quickly, almost as if he’s read her mind. “Not like that, not because of anything bad. I just can’t stop thinking about it, wondering what it was like. I’m scared to be near you, Skye, because I’m worried that’s all I will feel. I respect you, you know, and the idea that I might look at you differently now is driving me insane. I don’t think I’ve ever looked at a woman before and only been able to think of… sex.” He swallows hard on the last word, practically choking it out. Under different circumstances, Skye would think it was funny, the way he struggles to say it.

     “Ward…”

     “You don’t have to say anything,” he tells her. “Not yet. Just – think about it.”

     “Okay,” she says, and then she stands up and sees the boxers he took from her, neatly folded on a chair. She snatches them up. “I’m keeping these.”

     He looks at her with something like hope – as if she’s made some kind of huge symbolic gesture. Skye thinks maybe she has.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, how's the story going? Skyeward enough for you all? :D 
> 
> If you're posting a comment (because you're awesome) do you think you could say in your comment where you see this story going in terms of Skye and Ward's potential spawn (will they have a baby or not?) and which option you think would be best? I'm pretty sure I already have my storyline set in stone, so don't worry about influencing me - I'd just love to see everyone's opinions. :D


	6. Non Questa Volta

Skye comes to see him that morning, before they start training. “I don’t care if you just look at me and see sex,” she says, and then she pauses, frowns. “No, wait, that came out wrong. I mean, I _do_ care, but – well, it can’t last forever, can it? And so long as we’re still friends. I was just scared… after all of this happened, I thought you might hate me.”

     “I don’t hate you!” Ward exclaims, astonished. “You thought I did?”

     Skye nods miserably, and he lunges forward and enfolds her in a hug before he knows what he’s doing. She’s soft and warm against him. He can feel her breasts pressing into his chest, and he curses himself for even noticing. It’s wrong. He’s wrong. Something is wrong with him.

     “Ward,” she says softly, and she steps back and suddenly they’re kissing. He doesn’t even know how it happened, when he thinks about it later. He can’t say for sure who moved first or where or why – but her lips are as familiar as home. He wonders how many times he’s kissed her before that he doesn’t remember.

     He breaks the kiss. “Skye…” How is he supposed to tell her that he’s sleeping with May? That he’s not ready for a relationship, that he’s lied to her about protocol to make sure she won’t tell anyone?

     “That was nice,” she interrupts. “And maybe at Christmas, if we find some mistletoe, we can do that again.”

     Ward frowns, trying to understand what she’s saying. It’s not – she’s backing off, he realises. Giving him the option. Not pressuring him into this, whatever this is.

     “I’ll make sure Fitzsimmons put mistletoe on the bus next Christmas,” he promises.

     Skye pats his cheek, turns, and slips out of his bunk.

 

May appears silently behind him in the kitchen when he’s making breakfast. “I was going to come to your bunk last night,” she tells him.

     “Oh,” Ward says awkwardly.

     “You already had company,” May reminds him. “Is there something going on between you and Skye that I should know about?”

     He frowns at her, because she’s not usually this nosy. Still, he says, “No, nothing,” and then adds, “Skye was just upset.”

     “You should tell Coulson, if it’s anything serious,” May advises.

     “It was just… training stuff. You know how it is.” He knows he can be a good liar when he wants to be. He also knows that May is trained to see right through lies. He’s playing with fire here. She just nods, though, and leaves him to it.

 

Skye doesn’t come down for training.

     Ward waits five minutes, then ten, then fifteen. This is more than just lateness. Something is wrong.

     He checks her bunk, the kitchen, and even bangs on the bathroom door. He pokes his head into Coulson’s office. He runs back down again, and into the lab.

     “Fitz,” he says breathlessly. “Have you seen Skye?”

     The man just shrugs, and Ward curses. This is a _plane_. There are a limited number of rooms. Where the hell could she possibly be?

     He’s about to leave the lab when Simmons comes in from the passage at the back and says, “Fitz.” Then she sees Ward and makes the awkward face that always appears when she’s trying to keep something secret.

     Ward doesn’t have to ask. He just knows. He takes several steps towards the back of the lab, feels his stride get longer with every move he makes, and eventually he’s running, into the little back passages.

     Skye is leaning against a wall and crying. He stops in front of her, and she looks up and gazes at him with red, puffy eyes. “Ward,” she whimpers.

     “Tell me,” he says, feeling as though there’s a fist in his chest and it’s squeezing his heart.

     “I, um,” she takes a deep shuddering breath, “I got my period. I’m not – not pregnant.”

     Ward doesn’t know what he’s feeling. He would like to say that his first emotion is relief, but that’s not quite accurate. He steps close to Skye and folds her into his arms, burying his face in her hair. It smells nice. “Are you okay?” he asks.

     She sniffs against his chest. “Yeah. I – I mean, I think so. I don’t know why I’m crying, Ward, I’m sorry.”

     “Don’t be sorry.”

     “We didn’t need this, we didn’t need a baby. It just would have made everything complicated, I shouldn’t be crying about this.”

     Ward doesn’t care why she’s crying. He almost feels like crying himself. _Goodbye, Awk Ward._ The thought makes him choke out a half laugh, and then he says, “It’s okay to be sad, Skye.”

     “Is it okay to be glad, though?” she asks. “I just feel so guilty. Like I shouldn’t be happy about this.”

     “It’s good to be glad,” he soothes. “You said yourself, a baby would have made everything complicated. Can you imagine what horrible parents we would be?”

     “ _So_ horrible,” she sobs.

     “Exactly. It’s better that we didn’t put a baby through all of that – we would have just made mistakes. We would have hurt it.”

     Skye wraps her arms around him and clings on tightly. She says, “I would have loved it, though. I would have loved it so much.”

     “I know,” he whispers.

     “I was just starting to think – maybe a baby was the right thing for me. I’ve always wanted a family. That kind of unconditional love, you know?”

     “You _have_ a family,” Ward insists. “We’re right here, on this plane.” He hesitates, then says, “One day, Skye, you’ll have a baby, too. You’ll be a great mum, so long as you don’t name it Awk.”

     She pulls away from him and wipes her nose on her sleeve. “Awk only works if its last name is Ward.”

     “You know,” he says carefully, “about what I said in Venice. That we should forget all this?”

     She says, “Yeah?” and stares up at him with tear-stained cheeks.

     “I won’t ever forget this, Skye,” he promises.

     “Me neither,” she admits.

     Ward runs his hands down her arms, and then says, “You don’t have to train today.”

     “Thanks, Ward,” she says in a broken-down little voice.

     As he’s walking away, something makes him stop and look back over his shoulder. “You know, when you _are_ ready for that baby-”

     “Yeah?”

     “-I’m happy to help, if you need a partner.”

     She smiles, a watery, tear-filled smile, but a smile nonetheless. “Maybe we can call the next one ‘Oops’.”

     Ward leaves her alone in that passage, hugging her arms around her middle with her back pressed to the wall. He sees Fitzsimmons in the lab – and he’s smart enough to understand that they know what’s going on.

     “How is she?” Simmons asks.

     “Give her some time,” Ward says. “She’ll be all right. She’s strong.”

     “I’m sorry,” Simmons tells him quietly.

     Ward thinks about that baby that he imagined. How tiny it would have been, maybe with Skye’s eyes. How he would have held it so carefully in his arms, watched it grow and thrive. Taught it to fish, to read, to fight.

     “Me too,” he says to Simmons in a voice little more than a whisper. “Me too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're done! Thanks so much, everyone. This was a fun story to write! Also I don't know why all of my fics are six chapters long, it's a bit weird. I'll work on fixing that.
> 
> It was a bit sad at the end there, but hey, no pain, no gain, right? I never really intended to give Skye and Ward a baby from the beginning, just because there's no way they are mature enough to deal with it and their relationship would get really screwed up. Ward's married to the job, but Skye could never pass up the chance to have a family, so a baby would have ripped them apart. Still, this way was sad too.
> 
> In case you've been wondering about the chapter titles, they are all in Italian, because the story began in Venice. Here's a quick translation list if you want it. 
> 
> 1: Una Notte Di Passione = A Night Of Passion  
> 2: La Mattina Molto Scomodo = The Very Awkward Morning  
> 3: Non Sono Biscotti Nella Cucina = There Are No Cookies In The Kitchen  
> 4: Non Lasciate Skye Dare Al Bambino Un Nome = Do Not Let Skye Name The Baby  
> 5: Lui Prende I Miei Pantaloni = He Takes My Pants  
> 6: Non Questa Volta = Not This Time


End file.
